Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) is proud to announce its 25th Art & Culture Festival: Plugged In. This year’s Festival will be hosted on a custom website, starting the second weekend of this month: December 11, 12 and 13, 2020. www.tomoffinland.org
“It’s so important to continue the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival — even virtually because this year is Tom’s 100’s birthday. This festival is not only a platform championing queer art and queer artists but also a gathering place where all queer communities can come together,”said Rubén Esparza, Festival Coordinator and Founder of the Queer Biennial.
The Festival is one of the key public events the Foundation does each year and 2020 is also the 36th anniversary of Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF), a Los Angeles-based organization founded by Tom of Finland and Durk Dehner. ToFF’s mission is to protect, preserve and promote erotic art. The Foundation is located in Echo Park, in TOM House, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
As a community, we have faced so much: experiencing the devastation of HIV/AIDS, fighting the rampant censorship of how we create and express ourselves, and now maintaining connections during great social change and COVID-19,” said Durk Dehner, “Being able to come together at this moment is so vital for us.”
Visual arts segments during the Festival will include shorts submitted by artists and trailers from the Men.com x Tom of Finland series. Artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s has said,” I am thrilled and delighted to be participating in the annual Tom of Finland Art Festival. In 2019 I was honoured to be invited to make a short movie based on Tom of Finland’s Kake comic Service Station in collaboration with Men.com, and I hope to be invited to do it again next year so that I can make one with Mounties based on the Kake comic Kake in Canada. They don’t call them the ‘mounted police’ for nothing!”
*History of Leather and Fetish Talk with Durk Dehner and special guests including Jon Wright and John McConnell
*Artist’s Corner: Queer Art Practices with Rubén Esparza and Jordan Green, speaking with BlackManWhiteBaby, Suzanne Shifflett, Seosamh “Joe” Lily, Anka Connolley, and Vicente Urgecheta
*Overlaps: Art + Identity + Activism with Ron Athey, Cassils, and Rafa Esparza
*Around The World With Tom’s Men with Stuart Sandford, Brontez Purnell, Slava Mogutin, and Matt Lambert
